Image via @ibfk2014 on Twitter
Two weeks in a row now we’ve seen hat-tricks from Polish players whose careers we thought were sliding backwards, and I for one couldn’t be happier to see it. Last week we had Szymon Żurkowski’s hat-trick antics for Empoli, and this week Krzysztof Piątek was continuing a fairly hot-streak of scoring over in the Turkish Süper Lig for Istanbul Basaksehir.
It’s fair to say many of us have now completely written off Piątek and thoroughly expected him to fade into obscurity when he elected to move to Turkey last summer, with the difference between his moves and that of someone like Sebastian Szymański or Adam Buksa being that it wasn’t to one of the league’s top sides in the case of the former or on loan in the case of the latter.
Quietly, after a period of adjustment and a small injury, Piątek netted his first brace at the start of November and has played pretty well, going on to score another five times prior to the game against Konyaspor yesterday.
After Basaksehir fell 2-0 down early on, Piątek scored all three goals in a second-half hat-trick which saw the visitors run out 3-2 winners. His first, a successfully taken penalty after the goalkeeper had scuffed up the penalty spot, before a brave diving header saw Piątek equalise with just over ten minutes of normal time remaining.
Piątek had a fantastic chance to win it before he actually did, seeing a towering header saved almost point blank by the goalkeeper, before his eventual winner. Two minutes into stoppage time however saw Piątek fire a shot low across goal, and the goalkeeper could not keep it out this time.
To put Piątek’s numbers into perspective, he now has the same amount of goals as Adam Buksa, who has seen a real return to form and the national team during his loan spell in Turkey at Antalyaspor. I don’t think that it’s beyond the realms of possibility that Piątek should now receive similar praise despite a tough few years, beset by injury and not really finding a true home at any club since he left AC Milan in 2020. I suppose the big difference is that bigger things are expected of Piątek than of Buksa, and I think that’s completely fair when you consider what we have seen in their careers when you compare the heights they’ve reached respectively.
Regardless, Poland have now got to a point where there are a greater wealth of striking options for Michał Probierz than first thought. Going into the March play-offs, we know that Robert Lewandowski will be an automatic choice, but who should the other two be, assuming Probierz will choose three strikers as he previously has? Karol Świderski performs so well for the national side, but hasn’t played a competitive game of football since November last year and will likely need to shake off some of that inevitable rustiness. Arkadiusz Milik is a solid option for Juventus a lot of the time and even if he is playing less and perhaps not as well as he was, he is still a player of undeniable quality, albeit his showings for Poland have been questionable for some time now.
As for the more left-field choices, Buksa was picked by Probierz for the last two international breaks, so it would be fair to assume he could well get the nod again in March. This being said, if Piątek keeps scoring he could give the Selekcjoner a pleasant headache, and we shouldn’t forget Adrian Benedyczak as a younger option who is also capable of playing wider than the other names mentioned.
Probierz will not pick all six of the names mentioned, but three of these and maybe Benedyczak given his versatility seems a distinct possibility. Remove another spot for Lewandowski and that drops to just two, so which two? Świderski’s lack of football makes me nervous, but he probably will be picked regardless. For me personally, it should be between one of Świderski and Milik, and then one of the two playing in Turkey, Buksa and Piątek. Right now, I’d say Milik and Buksa, but there is still plenty of time before call-ups.
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